Newspoll: 9% swing in Sydney marginals

Newspoll today brings a poll from a sample of 800 respondents from the five most marginal Labor electorates in Sydney – Greenway (0.9%), Lindsay (1.1%), Banks (1.5%), Reid (2.7%) and Parramatta (4.4%) – which suggests the whole lot will be swept away, and perhaps others besides. Labor’s collective two-party preferred vote across the five seats is put at 43%, which compares with 52.1% at the 2010 election. The primary vote has Labor down from 43.2% to 34%, the Liberals up from 42.8% to 52%, the Greens down from 7.9% to 7% and “others” up from 6.1% to 7%. On two party preferred, Labor is down from 52.1% to 43%. Tony Abbott is also given better personal ratings (47% approval and 46% disapproval) than Kevin Rudd (37% and 55%), and leads 46-40 as preferred prime minister. The margin of error for the poll is about 3.5%. Full tables from GhostWhoVotes.

UPDATE: Kevin Bonham observes in comments: “These five were all surveyed by Galaxy which averaged 48:52 in the same electorates, via robopolling, with a much larger sample size, last week. It’s not likely voting intention has moved anything like five points in a week. So either someone has a house effect or someone (most likely Newspoll) has an inaccurate sample.”

UPDATE 2 (Galaxy Adelaide poll): The latest Galaxy automated phone poll for The Advertiser targets Kate Ellis’s seat of Adelaide and gives Labor one of its better results from such polling, with Ellis leading her Liberal opponent 54-46. This suggests a swing to the Liberals of 3.5%. The samples in these polls have been about 550, with margins of error of about 4.2%.

UPDATE 3 (Morgan poll):Morgan has a “multi-mode” poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday by phone and internet, which is different from the normal face-to-face, SMS and internet series it publishes every Sunday or Monday. The poll appears to have had a sample of 574 telephone respondents supplemented by 1025 online responses. The poll has the Coalition leading 53-47 on two-party preferred with respondent-allocated preferences (54-46 on 2010 preferences) from primary votes of 30.5% for Labor, 44% for the Coalition and 12% for the Greens. Of the weighty 13.5% “others” component, Morgan informs us that the Palmer United Party has spiked to 4%. The Morgan release compares these figures directly with those in the weekly multi-mode result from Sunday night, but given the difference in method (and in particular the tendency of face-to-face polling to skew to Labor) I’m not sure how valid this is. Morgan also has personal ratings derived from the telephone component of the poll.

The press don’t understand what happened David.
They did cost it: just not the coalition’s version. Since the coalition didn’t submit any.
No one has checked if the coalitions version is right or wrong.
The budget office is just pointing out the two may have different assumptions. It doesn’t blow anything out of the water.
Except stupid reporters. Lets see the coalitions version and see who’s right! My money’s on PBO

lefty, the problem is that however reasonable – for use in comparison to coalition costings – their numbers may have been, because they went too far, Treasury felt they had to make a statement that has turned the whole thing into a political mess.

Even if they don’t lose points over it, that line of attack may no longer be as effective as it could be.

Lefty I understand what Labor did and it may have been good strategy seeing the Coalition is playing games with their costings however Labor overplayed their hand by saying Treasury costed Coalition policies when in fact they didn’t. I agree with DN that Labor have now devalued that line of attack.

Personally, I reckon I could have run a better campaign than Rudd, and I’m not a professional politician. The holes in Abbott’s policies are glaringly obvious. As for Bruce Hawker the less said the better I think.

To look at a likely reason for some of this: the navy-moving thought-bubble would have been seen as a snub to Sydney jobs (second time Rudd has dished it out to Sydney; there was a similar line going on in the first leader’s debate.) I just don’t think there’s anything like five points in that silliness though.

As KB states, this poll is extremely dubious because it covers all the marginals as one block. Indeed, the last Galaxy poll just 7 days ago in these seats had the Liberals ahead 51-49 in Greenway ( a swing of 2%), 54-46 in Lindsay (a swing of 5%), 52-48 in Banks (a swing of 6%), 53-47 in Reid (a swing of 6%) and Parramatta 50-50 ( a swing of 5.5%). So the swing varied in the seats from just 2% to 6% (and none actually reached the 9% Newspoll seems to suggest as the average swing)http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2013/08/23/galaxy-marginals-polling/

Indeed, Newspoll also seems to suggest the ALP is doing significantly worse in these marginals than the ALP is doing nationally based on its own most recent national poll which covered the same timeframe. Does that mean Newspoll has the ALP doing better than average in some other marginal seats, in which case where are these? The poll was also conducted before the final debate which Rudd seemed to win comfortably, so if he got any bounce that would not have shown up in this poll

KB – This poll was conducted from last Friday to Wednesday, so would not have captured most of the response to Rudd’s naval announcement of the switch from Sydney to Queensland as that was made on Tuesday

Saw Mel Clarke and Latika on 24 this morn. Comparing organisation of trail.

Said that Abbott’s campaign spots have been tightly controlled and always stay on schedule (although journos never know in advance). Labor, however, seems less organised in that sudden decisions are made to change plans.

We know that Abbott is always tightly controlled so that he doesn’t have surprises sprung on him and he has his little speeches rehearsed well.

Someday, someone will explain to us how Labor could run a campaign as badly thought-out as this one. Right now, it seems just inexplicable.

That it is a bad campaign is indisputable, but with a large chunk of the media barracking for the libs, not questioning their policies and costings and highlighting every labor misstep it makes it worse.

paaptsef
Posted Friday, August 30, 2013 at 12:59 am | PERMALINK
Mod Libs famous dog walking polls have a lower MOE than this

The dog walking polls haven’t changed, the ALP is still stuffed.

This Newspoll might be “wrong” in that there might not be a swing of EXACTLY 9% at the election, however, if there is a massive swing against the ALP in ALP marginal seats in Sydney, whatever the final number, then I consider them “right”.

That is what polls are for really. To estimate the exact swing you need to aggregate the polling results and add a little political nous….

A series of changes in how electricity companies fix their spending plans are to be unveiled on Friday, aimed at tackling once and for all the ''gold plating'' of the electricity network - the reason for much of the surge in power prices over the past five years.

I can’t wait for this. Our current quarterly bill is $300 higher than for the same usage a year ago.

In the 1990s, Costello tried to bring some integrity into the election costings process. Then the PBO was a further step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the Libs have undermined the whole setup with their appalling behaviour during the last election and, to a lesser extent, this one.

One principle which has been upheld for a couple of decades now (I can’t recall if it came into effect before or after 1996) is that, during an election campaign, Treasury/Finance won’t cost anyone’s proposals unless asked to do so by the proponent.

The press release by Parkinson/Tune was intended to make it clear to thr Libs that they hadn’t breached this rule. But you can smell the apprehension in its words. The Libs under Abbott have taken the unprecedented step of casting slurs on the integrity of the economic departments. Thry have also promised to spash and burn the bureaucracy, move some agencies into thme boondocks, transfer functions to the States, create local amateur NGO bureaucracies ro twke on roles performed by departmentsl professionals, etc. Not since 1972 has a likely incoming government presented such a negative attitude towards the bureaucracy.

It will surely have to settle down soon. Hockey was sounding conciliatory last night. Sinodinos as Finance Minister would be a big help.

I wish people would stop complaining about the campaign because the media suggests it’s bad. This campaign is 10 times better then the 2010 campaign with Gillards “were moving forward” and its “sustainable Australia” slogans. Rudd took over with Labor’s primary vote on 29%. There was alot anger in the community- this was not going to be wiped away with Rudd regaining the Prime Minstership for 2 months. As for the suggestion by media that Gillard could of done better. We were going to lose 40 seats under Gillard- it’s a hogwash the story that has been peddled out by bitter Gillard backers who can’t hack that the decision to dump Rudd was stupid in the first place.

Saw Mel Clarke and Latika on 24 this morn. Comparing organisation of trail.

Said that Abbott’s campaign spots have been tightly controlled and always stay on schedule (although journos never know in advance). Labor, however, seems less organised in that sudden decisions are made to change plans.

We know that Abbott is always tightly controlled so that he doesn’t have surprises sprung on him and he has his little speeches rehearsed well.

Who’s controlling Rudd?

abbott being tightly controlled is part of the way the media presents him.

if abbott was the labor leader and rudd the liberal leader the focus would be entirely changed.

the Riley nodding video would be regularly shown with analysis by various drs on morning shows, questions over his freezing and suitability.

the lack of policies, costings and various mistakes, blunders and double counting would be scrutinised and analysed by various so called financial experts on a daily basis.

The $10 billion hole using treasury and finance methods would be trumpeted as proof of the risk and incompetence of abbott.

abbotts claiming of travel allowances on his so called charity jaunts would be highlighted as rorting the purse.

his truck driving stunt would be slammed as an insult to hard working truckies, his pretense to be able to drive a b-double would show his unfitness for office.

he would face daily questioning on the contradictions on work choices, taxes, health and infrastructure.

the competence of his ministers, bishop hockey joyce would be held to scrutiny.

opinion polling showing turnball more popular, his negative ppm and apporval rating would be the main news, his one vote victory over turnball would be impetus for questioning how secure his position was.

TDT and CA would regularly interview women who have experienced his charming ways.

About this blog

William Bowe is a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Australia’s Discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has been running the electoral studies blog The Poll Bludger since January 2004, independently until September 2008 and thereafter with Crikey.